Prairie Starport

By Rhonda Parrish, Timothy J. Anderson, Greg Bechtel and 14 more

A collection of short stories, essays and interviews in celebration of Candas Jane Dorsey.

Contains work by Timothy J. Anderson, Greg Bechtel, Eileen Bell, Gregg Chamberlain, Alexandrea Flynn and Annalise Glinker, Barb Galler-Smith, Anita Jenkins, Laina Kelly, Derryl Murphy, John Park, Rhonda Parrish, Ursula Pflug, Robert Runté, Diane L. Walton, BD Wilson and S.G. Wong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poise and Pen Publishing
• Release date: May 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781988233390

Rhonda Parrish

Rhonda Parrish is the co-author of Haunted Hospitals. She has also been published in Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She lives in Edmonton.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

There comes a time when you need to stop pretending that you’re still an apprentice and admit that maybe you know some things.

Candas and I were driving home after consuming an obscene amount of sushi and talking about work, and then she said that and *poof* blew my mind. She was right—I had been hiding behind the ‘I’m still learning’ shield and as terrifying as it was, perhaps it was time I admit to maybe knowing some things. Maybe.

That was just one of many times Candas has said or done something to shift my perspective and teach me about myself, my writing, this industry or the world in general, but that was the specific incident that inspired this collection. See, several months after that conversation I was talking with Greg Bechtel and recounted what Candas had said. He laughed. She told me pretty much the same thing, he said.

And that got me thinking.

Over the years Candas must have helped, taught, guided and inspired hundreds of people in thousands of ways. She deserved something by way of a thank you.

When I approached her partner, Timothy Anderson, to see if he had any suggestions he said, My feeling is that it might have to include literature... and I said, Oooh! I do anthologies—that is what I do. What if I compiled an anthology that was Stories in celebration of Candas Dorsey. No acceptances or rejections—we just invite people to send us stuff then I put them together and publish it.

And voila!

This right here? This is the result of that. Of me opening up the door and saying, If you want to contribute something to this anthology in appreciate of Candas and her work, send it to me.

Originally I’d assumed it would be a collection of fiction, but it very quickly became apparent that not only did non-fiction writers want to contribute but artists also. The result is a fun mix of genres, styles and mediums that I hope will make Candas proud.

Rather than divide this book into separate sections for fiction and non-fiction I’ve mixed them together. I was careful to make sure I gave Candas the last word, though. I think she’ll like that.

Rhonda Parrish

Edmonton

3/14/2018

TIMOTHY J. ANDERSON

SLOUGH

Nothing about Alberta bulls is going to inspire a Hemingway, nothing about our fishermen either. The 4-H Club teaches you to care for, and then not care for, a cow. Fishing means a couple of uncles in a shack on the ice in good spirits they brought from home, luring whitefish up to a hole. All the adults talk about is the price of oil, the price of grain, and the price of beer.

Closest we get to poetry is the second half of the sermon, when Reverend Willis riffs on free grace and how being bound to the earth does not mean we are bound to original sin. Nice to know that none of our sin has to be from the time of birth. We can build it up slowly, architects of our own need for redemption.

My folks never said anything good about the Church of the Nazarene over to Caroline. But they still sent me there, squished into the back seat of the Abbotts’ rusty car that every other teen would have known the make of. I wanted to ride my bike, but my mother said she wasn’t going to have me ruining my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and the logging trucks couldn’t be trusted. They jack-knife, you know.

Everyone at church was intense. They noticed if you didn’t look like you were paying attention during the sermon, and while it wasn’t a sin for a kid to be bored, it was a sign that Satan could be tempting them.

That Mother’s Day we were so busy waiting for Satan to play his hand that the girl in yellow gingham took us by surprise. She walked in like she owned the place. Didn’t talk to anyone, just sat on the left end of the Abbotts’ pew. Which meant she was sitting where I usually sat, and the Abbotts were habitual, like anyone with livestock, and they were not going to sit anywhere else. So I had to sit beside gingham girl and try to keep my mind on the service instead of trying to remember which of the four quadrants of the Land of Oz had everything yellow and did Dorothy Gale ever go there in her gingham dress and did it change colour. We had the books. Pretty sure the Winkies were yellow.

She sang all the hymns, but maybe not the tune. After the service, she got on a bike handpainted with bluebells and pedalled unevenly down the pebbly road until she couldn’t be seen anymore. So the Abbotts dropped me home and I told my parents they should let me ride my bike to church, because This Girl. Sunday dinner was then my mother’s monologue about who the girl might be and what bad parents she must have to let her bike on these roads alone. They jack-knife, you know, was all I said.

My dad didn’t laugh. He gave me that don’t-get-smart-with-your-mother look and got up from the table. If she offers you marijuana, say no politely, he said.

The next week she told me her name was Shell, short for Seashell, and her parents were hippies and they wanted to have sex on Sunday mornings so she came to church to give them some privacy because the library wasn’t open. When she said that, I felt a click, a lock snicking shut on knowledge that cannot be unhooked from Sunday mornings. Libraries are not open; parents have sex.

Every Sunday was like that. Shell would arrive, always in the same dress, and she would say something that made the world more real. I asked if her parents walked around naked, and she said there were too many blackflies for that. Sometimes inside, but not since she started getting her period. Besides, hippies and nudists were not mutually inclusive variables. She told me all about that, and that she was really fourteen. Snick.

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At the end of June, my parents said I could stay home on Sundays for the summer. I told them I would keep going to church so they could have time for sex. My dad invited me out to the porch for a talk.

The mosquitoes and blackflies were bad. He didn’t look at me, but there wasn’t anyone else he could be talking to. No need for the sex talk, he said, but I promised your mother to have a word with you, so look different when you go inside. And if this girl offers you anything…

I promise to think of Nancy Reagan.

Truth? They both inhabited an uncanny valley, the dead First Lady and the living Shell. One Sunday Shell showed me her new rose gold chain with a small gold-plated shell dangling from it. Combination fifteenth birthday and a good early harvest, she said. The rose gold didn’t really go with the yellow gingham, that dress that made her look so much younger. And nothing that grows naturally here is ready for harvest except asparagus, and how much asparagus would it take to buy a gold necklace?

What we grow is different from what most people grow, she said. You smoke it.

None of my business. But when the Abbotts went away on vacation I was allowed to ride my bike, and then my parents stopped paying attention so I could do it even when they got back. Once we got to the church at the same time and we stayed outside where we could hear but not be seen, where we could trade notes and no-one would hand us a pamphlet about the hell that awaits us. But when the service was over and there was lemonade in the hall, the church ladies looked at us like we had been doing the devil’s work. So the next week we met a block away from the church and didn’t go at all. We headed for the other side of the highway, because the library was closed, and we picked berries and talked about stuff. She was homeschooled and knew way more about way less.

Then one of my great uncles got sciatica and my mother and father started driving to Sundre a couple of evenings a week, to do whatever needed doing.

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That night Shell called Follow me! and pedalled fast to beat me over the first rise. We went over a few more before she turned into a gravel road and kept going. I knew she wanted to lead, to be first, so I took my time following the dust. Then I saw the bike leaning against a pole by the side of the road, and past a kind of embankment I could see the back of Shell’s head and her shoulders. The light was weakening, so she looked like a cutout stuck into the embankment itself. I clambered over to see what she was staring at.

It’s a slough, I said.

Johnston’s slough was nothing to look at during the day, even the ducks didn’t bother with it, but as the colour leached from the landscape the menacing obelisk defied landlogic, seeming to rise.

Wait.

The wind picked up, stars came out and Shell’s necklace caught the last ray of sun as her skin turned gooseflesh in the chill.

Then there they were, dancing lightly, the stars under them, darker than the sky above.

The only way to go up, she whispered, is to go in.

You have to be nuts to think you’re going to find anything in Johnston’s slough. Leeches, maybe.

Moments later she was in, and physics were upturned as the sound of her travelled faster than the sight of her, the splashes shattering the starport and the ghost of her body moving through the warp.

Then she was standing there, wet, skin and glimmer and I used the lighter she had in her bag to heat them until they dropped, brought life to her corpse by sacrificing a half dozen tiny aliens. The yellow of the lighter flame blinded me to everything but her skin, the gross leeches, the blood running red and dropping black out of the light. My breath unsteady.

I think that’s all, I said, hoping it was true.

You have to be sure.

Yes. All I can see.

Then she handed me the pale little leech-shaped wad. A metaphorical apple. She had one too, and she lit it. She barely drew in, then she blew out and the smell was something between burning moss and lilacs just before they open.

She looked at me, not daring me but expecting me.

It’s good, she said. No chemicals. My folks grow rare tobaccos. They don’t give you cancer, but they can take a little getting used to. This one isn’t sacred or anything, just different.

So I lit up, because it wasn’t marijuana but it still might count as defiling my temple. Whatever changed that night wasn’t going to unchange.

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A few evenings later I was reading on the porch, wondering if citronella candles annoy humans more than they repel insects, when the pulsing started. The low clouds shivered a jittery unsettled shimmer. Likely over by the Johnston place. Ships come to the prairie starport, I guessed. Citronella not effective on aliens. Snick.

Then coming from the direction of the pulsing, headlights latched onto the road, crawling my way. Car accident? They jack-knife, you know. It was our car, my folks back from Sundre and getting out of the car with the dregs of big blue raspberry slushes and their stained lips.

Something going on over by Johnston’s, Dad said. Maybe the marijuana growers getting busted.

I didn’t look up from my book. Aliens. There are aliens over there.

Even not looking I could tell Mom was tired and wired on blue sugar. Low impulse control thrusters engaged, Captain.

I think, a whiff of raspberry acid in the words, we would have noticed a spaceship.

The aliens are small. Vampiric. They come from the underside of the starport.

The parental unit shook both heads and trudged inside. Later I will find my father sneaking a toilet bowl cleaner into the tank so the water will turn blue. He has told Mom the slush will continue to be blue all the way through the system.

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I told Mom and Dad I would set the house on fire if anyone sang Sixteen Candles.

Then the Abbotts got a new car and the old Sunday beater was in our driveway and the keys were on our kitchen table and my parents were saying this is safer than a bike on these roads and it’s a Rambler. They would control how much I drove by rationing a fuel allowance.

Pretending to be embarrassed by my effusive gratitude, or lack thereof, Dad buried himself in the pages of the Sundre Roundup. Mom started unloading the dishwasher, realized the dishes were dirty and put them back.

Dad clucked. Who did they think would buy rare tobacco in these parts? Can’t hardly smoke anywhere anyways. Taxes, too. Price point. Can’t blame them for leaving. He passed the paper to Mom, who put it on the counter.

You’ll want to read that, he said to her.

Maybe later, she said. Dishes don’t do themselves.

You’ll want to read it, he pressed. Interesting recipe for a jellied salad.

I wanted to call out Oxymoron! but when I looked up I saw the secret message pass between them, saw Mom pick up the paper and read, her head bobbing. How awful, she muttered.

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She was there in the rear view, which was on the night setting so everything was darker and the lights of the cars floated under the surface. There she was, maybe in the back seat, but just the ghost of her. Could be a pew, now that I think of it. Her hair was wet and there might have been a leech on her collarbone, or maybe it was a shadow. She took off her rose gold shell necklace and I felt her warmth as she leaned forward and put it around my neck as I drove. Then she sat back and hummed until she found the same pitch as the tires on the road, and by the time I reached the turnoff for Johnston’s place, she had become a copy of last week’s Sundre Roundup.

When I got home they were getting ready for bed. Dad grunted as he headed for the bathroom to brush his teeth and chuckle over the blue toilet water. Mom was in the dark kitchen with the fridge door open and I knew she’d forgotten why she was there. She looked at me, her face stretched by the way cold bent the light from the fridge, the way the Johnston’s slough warped to make the starport for Shell. I saw the retinal shimmer of the cataract in her left eye, the way she looked me as straight in the eyes as she could, then refocussed on the gold.

That’s hers," Mom said. Snick.

Oil’s up. Grain’s up. Beer is what it is. Going to be the architect of my own need.

GREG BECHTEL

THE SMUT STORY

Disabling that economic structure in order to encourage self-discovery, intelligent relations, individual sexual freedom, and sexual transcendence on a routine basis would violate the sanctity of the marketplace, the shrine within which this cultural, sexual discourse occurs. The failure or disabling of individual imagination, so impoverishing to our sexual and emotional lives, enriches the pornographers.

And that, of course, is why we are not encouraged to be our own pornographers.

— from Candas Jane Dorsey’s Being One’s Own Pornographer (as quoted by T.i.o. Boop)

III

Press Conference

March 14, 2010

Leva Cappucino Bar

Edmonton, AB

Let me be perfectly clear.

The Hermen collective does not know the current whereabouts of Mr. (or Ms.) T. Boop. Any one of us would happily testify under oath that he (or she) was without a doubt one of the most attractive women (or men) we have ever seen. However, try as we might — and trust me, we have tried — we cannot come up with a consistent description. Nor do any of Hermen’s members have any knowledge of Ms. (or Mr.) Boop beyond the events of Hermen’s Erotica and Pornography Night, now more commonly known as the Mother’s Day Affair.

Certain local pundits have suggested that the mere scheduling of such an event on Mother’s Day was in poor taste. The Hermen collective respectfully disagrees. Indeed, we would argue that any attempt, whether implicit or explicit, to repress (or deny) the obvious connections between motherhood and sex is at best misguided. Fuck the virgin-whore dichotomy. However, regardless of any abstract moral(istic) quibbles surrounding the underlying concept and timing of the event itself, the following statement is intended to address some of the more pointed allegations — particularly those of a certain Peter Smith — that have recently resurfaced in several print venues. To wit, Hermen can neither confirm nor deny reports of a post-reading orgy following the Mother’s Day reading of May 10, 2009.

The collective would have preferred not to respond to these allegations at all, since if you weren’t there it’s none of your damn business. I mean, seriously. Why do you care? Seems to me you’re probably getting off on this too. Nonetheless, given the frequency and persistence of these allegations, as well as the overwhelming public